Edwardian England and the Idea of Racial Decline

An Empire's Future

Christopher Prior

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137373410
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern History
• Index: History

Emerging from a long and exhausting conflict against the Boers in South Africa, Edwardians are often perceived as rocked by a profound set of doubts about the future of the British Empire. Drawing upon a wide range of popular sources, this study considers the level of middle-class engagement with such strains of pessimistic thought.

1

Military Efficacy and the State of the Nation

Abstract: This chapter considers middle-class attitudes towards Britain’s military ability during and after the South African War. It argues that an enduring belief in the ability of the ordinary soldier, combined with a powerful critique of Britain’s governmental and elite military handling of the conflict that transcended political boundaries, foreclosed the emergence of any belief that difficulties faced in fighting the war in South Africa were emblematic of a racial decline of the ordinary Briton. Drawing upon responses to the works of Frederick Maurice and Arnold White in particular, this chapter also argues that any difficulties felt to have been encountered in recruiting healthy soldiers to fight in South Africa were not seen by the public as representative of a broader decline in Britain’s military ability.

Prior, Christopher. Edwardian England and the Idea of Racial Decline. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. DOI: 10.1057/9781137373410.

What did the English public make of the South African War? Let us start with a very simple underlying assumption. The English public took a keen interest in the South African War. The public gave generously to the numerous funds set up to assist soldiers injured on the veldt. In February 1900, East Sussex County Council gave public donations totalling £954 to the Lord Mayor of London’s Transvaal Fund. Only five months later, the council handed over a further £1,288 towards the Lord Mayor’s Mansion House Fund.¹ One can support a nation’s troops without necessarily supporting what they are fighting for, but Andrew Thompson has demonstrated that fundraising efforts like these were testament to both the ‘dynamism of provincial philanthropy’ and the civic pride felt at the role one’s region had played in the conflict.² Even Bernard Porter’s revisionist account of general domestic British disinterest in empire suggests a late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century deviation from this trend, with the public taking notice of South Africa.³

That public support for winning the conflict was so strong is demonstrated by the politics of the era. As is well known, the South African War laid bare divisions within the Liberal Party, which was in stark contrast to the Unionists’ unity of purpose.⁴ With Lloyd George’s ‘pro-Boers’ at one end of the spectrum and Rosebery’s Liberal Imperialists at the other, the Liberal Party certainly provided ammunition to opponents eager to cast them as a party hopelessly torn apart by debates about the conflict. Nevertheless, the ‘pro-Boers’ were only ever a minority group within the party and were aware of the need to tone down their beliefs for fear of abuse and loss of support from the public.⁵ As one newspaper commented in December 1899, ‘anyone who confesses to sympathy for the Boers just now runs the severe risk of a severe handling from the man in the street.’⁶

Liberal Imperialists also had only a patchy impact at a grassroots level. Aside from certain areas such as Birmingham, their cause was not helped by figures such as Rosebery who had a rather elitist disregard for the Liberal rank and file.⁷ Mainstream Liberal opinion certainly criticized government policy. Some Liberals argued that the conflict might have been avoided had London been more effective in its use of diplomacy. As Reading’s Liberal paper the Reading Observer argued in July 1901, ‘Liberals will never agree’ on whether the war was started for ‘just or unjust’ reasons.⁸ Once British supremacy in South Africa was assured, furthermore, Kitchener’s use of concentration camps and scorched earth tactics enabled Campbell-Bannerman to appear the inheritor of Gladstonian Liberalism, framing his attacks on the government in moral terms.⁹ However, as studies of local Liberal Associations have shown, most Liberals followed Campbell-Bannerman’s line that, even if the means might be criticized, Britain still had to win the war, and that her troops should have the public’s full support.¹⁰ As far as the Reading Observer was concerned, ‘To restore independence to the Boer Republics is out of the question.’¹¹

Whilst there was public support for victory in South Africa, the conflict raised worrying questions about Britain’s international standing. After all, the South African War altered British military and diplomatic life. One must not exaggerate the impact the conflict had upon army tactics in the long term, but it helped power the creation of a General Staff, and highlighted Britain’s diplomatic isolation, which led to the alliances with France and Japan.¹² Of course, some commentators attempted to put a positive spin on the geopolitical situation. Of the entente cordiale, for instance, the Liberal Imperialist Birmingham Daily Post declared that ‘Strictly speaking, we have no need of alliances’, and that the agreement had been made simply to better secure long-term international peace.¹³ Those seeking signs that Britain was still a modern power found solace in the building of the Dreadnought, although the launch of the battleship, which acquired ‘remarkable symbolic value’, naturally generated more enthusiasm on the right.¹⁴ Nevertheless, most commentators recognized that the move towards international alliances in the wake of the South African War indicated the start of challenging times created by ambitious foreign rivals.

It is commonly suggested that the war also sparked fears about the state of Britons themselves. Porter has argued that the South African War was the first time society treated unfitness as a matter with serious implications for the empire’s strength. Anxiety about the number of would-be recruits who were rejected on the grounds of ill health or physical disability – somewhere between 25 and 90 per cent, depending on who one consulted – made the need to address volunteers’ levels of strength and ability a priority.¹⁵ Similarly, Searle suggests that the ‘scare of racial deterioration’ had developed ‘largely as a result of the exposure of the poor physique of recruits during the Boer War’.¹⁶

In response to this historiography, this chapter will examine English attitudes towards their collective fighting ability during the war and, in particular, how far racial decline was believed a contributory factor to the difficulties faced in defeating the Boers. It will consider both responses from during the war and the inevitable post-mortems after May 1902, to better understand whether lasting impressions of the conflict sparked broader Edwardian concerns about decline....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1  Military Efficacy and the State of the Nation
• 2  Health and Poverty in Urban England
• 3  Moral Reform, Youth Movements, and Hooliganism
• Conclusion
• Select Bibliography
• Index